Runny, Stuffy and Yucky

Yup, the sick bug has hit our house. Last week Tanner's nose started to run and I thought, oh no... here it comes. Gratefully his never got any worse. But I had been fighting a sore throat for about a week and I guess whatever Tanner had was enough to throw me over the edge. This weekend I became full on sick. Yuck. And of course Grandma was here, which is always a bummer to be sick when Grandma is here. This is one of those head colds that make you feel like you're constantly underwater with all the other fun side effects of a common cold. Oh I hate being sick. Someone told me it should be a rule that you can't get sick while you're pregnant and I totally agree. Can someone work on getting that rule into effect?

But even with the gross runny, stuffy, yucky bug-o that I have I can't stop the fact that it's ALMOST OCTOBER!!! I can't believe it. So, time for some fun Halloween crafts. Ty came home with a cute fall leaf from preschool this week which reminded me that we need some new decor for the holidays. My mom found the perfect costumes for the boys a week or so ago so now it's time for all the pumpkin fun. I'm not a huge holiday decorator, but I just love the colors of fall and there are so many creative fun things you can do.

I found these super cute and crafty treat ideas off parents.com I can't wait to try them out.

Witch Cupcakes
Ingredients

1-1/2 cups chocolate frosting
1 package (4-3/4 ounces chocolate cones (Nabisco Oreo Cones)
Orange nonpareils
1 can (16 ounces) vanilla frosting, divided
Neon-green food coloring
12 cupcakes, removed from paper liners
Chocolate chips
Green and red tube icing
Mike and Ike Tangy Twister candies
Chocolate Jimmies
Directions
1. Place chocolate frosting in a freezer-weight zip-top bag and snip off a small corner. Pipe base of cones, dip in orange nonpareils, and set aside.
2. Place 1/2 cup vanilla frosting in a another zip-top bag and snip off a small corner. Tint remaining frosting green and frost cupcakes.
3. Turn cupcakes on sides, then place decorated cones on top. Using vanilla frosting, pipe eyes on cupcakes. Attach chocolate chips for pupils and pipe a dot onto chips. Use red icing for mouths, green icing for warts; shape candies into noses. Pipe chocolate icing onto cupcakes for hair and sprinkle with chocolate jimmies.

Monster Mash-Mallows

Ingredients
1/4 cup green melting wafers
1 cup orange melting wafers
1 cup purple melting wafers
Lollipop sticks
24 large marshmallows
Sprinkles, candy corn, and candy icing decorations
1/4 cup chocolate chips, melted
Directions
1. Place melting wafers in separte small bowls. Microwave for 15-second intervals, stirring in between, until melted. Insert one end of lollipop sticks into melted green wafers. Push green-colored end of each stick into a marshmallow. Let set 3 minutes.
2. Dunk marshmallows into orange or purple melted wafers, shaking off any excess coating. Place on a sheet of wax paper, and top with assorted sprinkles or decorations.
3. To make faces, place melted chocolate in a resealable plastic bag, and snip off one tiny corner. Pipe face designs onto marshmallows.


I'll wait until I'm not sick to make them and then you can come on over and try them out:)

Safety First

Today I took the kids to a safety fair in Loomis with Ty's preschool. Other than the fact that it was soooo hot today, we had a blast. We met our friends from school up there and right away the boys had an agenda; to do and see everything! After getting our 'slow for the cone zone' tattoo we ran down the hill to ride the train before the line got too long. Our conductor was a crazy driver, but I don't think the kids even noticed. After the fun ride the kids played with bubbles, went fishing and ended up at the gymnastic center they had laid out. Right in the middle of flipping and rolling and crawling a CHP helicopter landed right on the field about 100 yards from us. The boys got so excited. Ty threw on his shoes, grabbed his friend Alex and they were off running. Tanner took a little longer to get his shoes on but once the shoe was on, he wasn't far behind the pack. Ty and Alex where the first two kids to make it to the helicopter while the swarm of people filed in behind them. Tanner wanted so badly to get in, and was very disappointed that you could only look from the ground. Frankly, I was glad he couldn't get in. Knowing my kids, they would of figured out how to make the propellers go round or hit the eject button or something. It could happen.

We then had lunch and played at the park. It was a nice break for mommy to sit and eat in the shade. On our way out Ty wanted to crawl up into the tractor they had on display, but once he got to the top of the ladder he decided it was too high and climbed down. Tanner then shimmied on up to the top, sat in the driver seat and had a nice long chat with the helper there about the big tractor and working on the roads and some other stuff I couldn't catch. Finally I convinced him to come down so we could see the next thing. Even though the tractor seat seemed too high, Ty really wanted to go in the PG&E truck bucket thing that they would lift off the ground high into the sky. I thought for sure he'd chicken out before it was our turn, so I said sure, why not. When it was our turn next I asked Ty if he was sure he wanted to go really high into the sky. I felt his little body shake just a little and he said, 'it's really high mom. Will you be my friend and go with me?'

'I don't think they'll let me go Ty'

'Please Mom, I really want to go...' and then it was our turn. I didn't think they'd let Tanner go up in it but as I walked Ty up the control operator scooped up Tanner and said, 'Let's go chief.' I lifted Ty in and then asked the guy in charge, 'Do I have to go too?' wondering if he'd just take the boys for me. I'm not scared of heights, just anything over about 30' is not great for me.

'Sure, come on, the baby will love it.'

'It might make the baby come out.' I said.

'It's okay, I'm medically trained.'

Great. So I climbed into the bucket and held Ty's hand. Tanner loved it and surprisingly Ty did great too. I was very proud of him. We went about 50' in the air. On the way down we stalled for about 5 sec. I don't know if the guy was just trying to be funny or not, but it wasn't funny. The funny part I'm sure was watching me trying to climb out of the silly bucket. There weren't any steps inside and the bucket came up to about my waist. You watch an eight-month pregnant lady try to get out of that and tell me if you think it's funny.

We finished the day with a quick picture in the fire truck and then I was done. 100 degree heat and 2 hours later, I was done. But the boys really enjoyed their time with their friends and seeing all the cool stuff. Another fun day for our scrapbook. Tomorrow.... Apple Hill with Grandma and G.G. (Great Grandma). Wow, these kids have too much fun.

One down (well out) One to go

Back in April my boys were being boys and ended up having a major collision which ended with Ty's teeth meeting Tanner's head. It was bad. Blood, tears, the whole nine. Then, to make matters worse, the exact same scene played out two weeks later. Poor kids. We took Ty to the dentist just in case, and he confirmed our fears. The hit was hard enough that it made them loose and the roots became loose too. Frankly he was surprised they were still hanging on. It's now been 5 months and we hadn't thought much about it again until this morning. It was 8:30 and we were getting ready to leave in 5 min. for preschool. All of a sudden Ty ran up to me and said, 'Mom, my tooth hurts!' He opened his mouth and his front tooth was loose, very loose. Oh my goodness. I told him to close his mouth thinking some how that it would help and I quickly looked for the phone. Before I could even dial he opened his mouth and a little white tooth fell out. Oh my goodness again.

I probably didn't help the situation with my reaction, but I couldn't think of what to say or do. I hadn't talked to Ty about the tooth fairy and the- you loose a tooth and a new one comes in, nor could I get the picture out of my head of my little boy growing up looking silly for the next however many years. I know, that's not the important thing, but then there is all the potential teasing and nicknames that kids are going to be giving him over the next couple of years. And then, Ty kept saying 'I'm never going to get my tooth back.'

Well I took him in to the dentist after school and he said the other one will be out with in six months. We do have the option of putting in some fake ones when the other one falls out if we so wish. I worked really hard to make the situation as positive as possible and I called Grandma for re-enforcements and Dad played a wonderful roll in helping Ty feel like a big kid. He's proud of it right now and Eric thinks it's super cute. I would too, if I didn't think it was going to be like that for 3 maybe four years. Good think I'm a pro at photoshop and I can just generate a tooth for our family pictures, but until then... here is my cute toothless son.

Organiza-what?

The topic for today is organ-I-za-shun.

Now I’m a girl who can think up a million and one things to do, but implementing those things aren't always as esay. But if I don't succeed at this, maybe it will help someone else.

My first bit of advice would be PROFOUND AND SIMPLE!
Don’t do it!!!!
seriously. Run. I say RUN.
Be free! Let spontaneity rule!!!

But, due to the recent computer problems we have experienced, some revamping is in need.

But then I sat and pondered the word. Why start with organ?
How drab? Why not zipe-i-zashun? I mean if your going to make a word represent things that makes your brain swell out your ears, and bring memories of hours of sorting, cleaning out, and working while my friends hung out at the pool…. it should at least be fun to say.
SO, I’ll stick with the shun’ part of the word. SHUN organization! Profound and simple! I shun with my brain.organ i za shun.

Well as you can see it was all going well until some one called and I needed to lay my paws on something like pronto and I couldn’t because how embarrassing….I couldn’t find it. And that reminded me of how hard it is to get the kids to school on time because all I can find are one red sock and one baby sock from when they were 6months old.

I am the queen of un-organization so I’ll be reading all your blogs.

When everything has a place I know where it goes.
Profound I know. I’m into simple revelations these days.
Pretty much all organization can fit under that one rule though.

Not to be disappointing I’ll share with you how I will be organize my digital pics. Since this is something that has been on the top of my to do list, at least I can contribute my thoughts on this matter. We spend our lives buying containers, and getting the house just so, and then are clueless with our treasured memories.
With a few basic tips you’ll have your pictures right where you want them. When you need to print that picture for mother’s day from last years bluebonnets, you can go right to it cuz your organ.i.za.ed.

I am going to assume you archive EVERYTHING! No exceptions. I’ve had hard drives crash, computers crash, and flashdrives crash! Trust me you don’t want to be using the next two years of income tax refunds paying for data recovery. It’s in the thousands peoples!!! Your computer doesn’t have a voice recording that says, “move data I’m about to crash down and eat all your family photos”.

You need to burn all your digital pictures onto cd’s, I use dvd’s and now I will make two copies of EVERYTHING because I just will and you should too. Wouldn't you hate to be so good and have one and only one burned and then, oops, your two year old uses it to play with and it gets so scratched up that oh well, those photos are gone. That would be very very bad.

Organizing….For starters and this is really complicated guys…I will create a folder on the external hard drive (or desk top) and it says 2008. Within that folder are 12 separate folders names Jan. Feb….for each month of the year. You could go as far as to make dated files for each week in that monthly file but I won’t do that.

If you can rename you want to do that but leave the image #’s in tact. I'll rename them with the date they were taken because I empty my flash cards immediately. If you don’t, you can at least rename them by the event, maybe just maybe you can reference your calendar for an exact date later. Even if you don’t know the exact date you’ll at least know what month they were taken in.

Then I'll burn 2 dvds, and immediately make a contact sheet. I will store the contact sheet and the dvd together in a plastic sleeve in a notebook. You can use month dividers in the notebook too.

Now I'll have my files stored in three separate archive forms. The external, and 2 dvd’s.

They will be in ONE place on the external in ONE folder with subfolders. They will be so nice and organized and I will always be able to find exactly what pics I need when I need them by looking at the contact sheets in my notebook.

So, hopefully this will work and loosing priceless photos will never be my problem or yours. Happy shooting, storing and organ I zing.

Quote of the day, well maybe of the week

Joy is an inward singing that cannot be silenced by outward negative circumstances. Yes, even when life seemingly is falling apart. - Robert D. Foster

The apple doesn't fall far...

Obviously Eric and I have no problem having a good time with very little as Eric so appropriately shows us all in my previous post, and it's nice to see that my kids don't have a problem with that either.

Yesterday my boys went out back to play and I had 5 min. to check my emails. After my quick computer break I went out back to make sure all was well. I had seen Ty playing through the back window, but hadn't seen Tanner so I was wondering what thing he had gotten into or climbed up on or found something completely new to do in our backyard. You just never know with that one what you might find. So I walk out back to find no immediate evidence of Tanner's latest adventure. I said hi to Tyler and asked what he was up to to which he responded, 'I'm just pulling this around Mom,' like, duh, isn't it obvious, which it was. Ty had our blue ice chest out and was doing just that, pulling it around the yard.

So I asked a less obvious question so not to annoy my four year old. 'Ty, where's Tanner?' Ty smiled and said, 'I don't know.' I would have started to worry that I couldn't find my son and his brother didn't know where he was either, expect for the little smile behind Ty's oh so innocent answer. I didn't question it further, I just stepped back and observed, and this is what I saw next.


Do you see what I saw? I thought it was a little odd that every 1/2 circle or so around the playhouse the lid of the cooler made a slight adjustment on it's own. Sometime it would even open a little. It was very amazing:) So again, not wanting to spoil the fun, I asked Ty, 'is that heavy to pull Ty, it looks like there might be something in there...' Ty just laughed and then he said, 'Oh yes Mom, it's very heavy, but I don't know why! I guess I'll keep pulling.' The laughter continued and was joined by more laughter coming from within the cooler. I ran to grab my camera and then the strangest thing happened. Something with two little eyes peeked out and looked right at me. You tell me if you can guess what it was.

Being able to Laugh rather than Cry

We had a fun moment last night but more importantly we handled it like pros. A few days ago, something was happening that had made me super grumpy and something else happened that set me off (shows how important it was, I can't even remember what the basic happenings were) but what I do remember is what the direct cause of the something else... the ketchup bottle that was in my hands made contact with the sliding glass door as I walked by it, which did cause the bottle the break on the bottom. To add to the something and the something else that had just happened, the ketchup bottle was brand new and I had no where to put all the ketchup that was still in the broke bottle. Well, to sum up that day, I decided to keep the bottle, just leave it up-side-down and I made sure to tell Eric to, so it wouldn't get put back in the fridge the other way and really make a mess. The plan seemed fine and I moved on with my day, and obviously, I'm very over whatever the something and something else was.

But.......... last night Eric and I had a late dinner due to some things we had to be at in the evening and I asked Eric to grab the ketchup from the fridge. He did and as he was walking over to put some on my plate for me, he started to shake it.... like you're suppose to right? WRONG!!! The bottle still had a hole in it and in case you are wondering what happens when you shake a ketchup bottle with a whole in it, it looks something like this.


So as he was walking over I said, 'Eric you have ketchup on your shirt,' at the same time he looked down and said, 'Uh-oh. Look.' Yes there is ketchup on the carpet in the pictures. But instead of getting mad I grabbed the camera, Eric acted like he was dying and then we got to work to clean it up, and everything came out fine. I think it's because we laughed over the spilled mess instead of getting grumpy. Bonus points to us for looking at the lighter side of life.

By the way, we threw away the ketchup bottle.

Elephants, Tigers and Horses, Oh My!

Eric and I are always looking for fun new things to do with the boys so this year when I heard the circus was coming to town, I jumped right on it. I haven't been to the circus since I was about 9, and it was a sad time because my dad got a flat tire on the way and it was hot and took forever to change and we were so late we missed half the show, and everyone was grumpy and it just wasn't the fun event we had hoped for, so I was super excited to go again and create a happier memory of the circus. Eric had never been to a circus, and the boys are so in love with animals I thought for sure it would be a hit. I set an alarm on my calender to remind me the morning tickets went on sale so I could be the first to call in. I really debated about which tickets to buy. Each section had about a $20 difference, and you just never know how they are going to have the arena set up and what a good seat vs. a better seat is at these kind of events. I decided that I would go for the cheapest tickets on the lower level and see what we got from there.

We told Ty about the circus after we got the tickets and we've had a little count down going ever since, to help build the anticipation. That worked a little too well, and Eric and I were so glad when it was finally circus week so Ty would be able to better understand how long until we went to the circus. Then Thursday came, and I was very nervous. Tanner did not feel good at all. He had some major problem with his tummy and he was in a lot of pain around noon time and I didn't know how the afternoon was going to play out. Ty was doing, whatever this 4 year-old thing is he's doing, and I didn't really know if I wanted to reward him with a circus that night because he was being soooo yucky. I was sick and couldn't keep down my lunch, and I had tons and tons of work piled up that I really needed to get to. Was this going to be another good intention gone bad, I didn't know.
Well, Eric got home and we ventured down to Arco Arena to see what the night had in store. I think Eric was the most excited:) We got there and all seemed to be well. After seeing the animals outside getting ready to go in for the show we also went in to find our seats. The tickets I had said row A and I assumed that there were double letters first then single letters, so we'd be about half way up. Ummmm, I was wrong. IT STARTED WITH ROW A. I was so excited. There were 4 rows of fold out chairs in front of us, and then there was the stage. I couldn't believe we had such great seats. Plus, we had the isle next to us, so Tanner and Ty both took their turns dancing in the isle to the fun music. The boys had a great time, and at one point I looked over and Tanner was waving at the horses, and every time a new act came out, Ty leaned over with huge eyes and said, 'Mom look, the elephants," or whatever was coming out next. They had some fun acrobatics too. Ty really wanted a snow cone and a light thing that cost $20, no thank you, but every time one of the vendors walked by Ty would stand up and try to wave him down, saying "hey, hey, over here.' How he figured that out, I don't know, but it was cute. And no, we didn't give in because I knew I could find the same toy for $5 at Target. I'm so smart. My favorite part was the motorcycles. I forget what they called themselves, but they all got in the dome cage and at the same time rode around and around. I really thought it might through me into labor I was so nervous I was going to witness a crash, and death not 50 feet from me. Oh my, it was intense, but so amazing!

We only had one meltdown and now we have some amazing memories to look back on forever. It was a very fun night and a much needed family time for the Lawrences. Now I just need to figure out how to explain to a 2 year old why we can't ride the tigers and have an elephant.

Sadness Strikes

So it's been a little while due to a variety of things happening in the Lawrence house hold. As mentioned previous we've been experiencing some trouble with our computer, which is never a good thing for anyone, but worse when it is part of your business. It's made it really hard to get my work done and just been plain annoying, ya know. Well, since our first attempt to fix it didn't work, Eric took matters into his own hands. We did a full reset, clean up, wipe off, whatever you want to call it, of our computer. We spent several days making sure everything we needed was backed up and saved and pressed clear. The rest and re-install of all the programs and files seemed to go smoothly. 24hours after things got back up and running we were getting ready for the day and Eric mentioned how nervous he was to find whatever we had missed when we cleaned it off and what we didn't save. I felt confident that we were going to be okay, and a document or two lost wasn't going to kill us even if that had happened which I didn't think it had.

Later that same day, I sat down to post a new blog about the frustrating experience of being without a computer and I wanted to change the photo on my desktop too, so I opened our iphoto folder where we keep all our family photos when tragedy struck. I literally felt my stomach drop to my toes and the nauseousness was overwhelming, and no, it wasn't because of the pregnancy. Not due to anyone person, just a matter of miscommunication, the photos were gone. ALL OF THEM. A whole years worth of family photos, not saved. I was beside myself. I got a small glimpse of how one must feel after experiencing a fire or flood in their home. It's a horrible feeling. It took well over an hour for me to calm down and I got really practical about the situation. They are gone, they are just pictures, and I still have my family and everything else that I own. Lesson learned. Move on.

After all that my mom and Eric got right to work though and found out that we have a slight chance of recovering them through another company. Granted it's $400 but it's priceless memories that we'd love to get back. Christmas, birthdays, family visits and trips, yup, it would be worth it. So until we exhaust all possibilities, pray for success because I don't want to move on :( But there is no use doing anything until we get a final answer. I'll keep you posted.

Look Grandpa, a humming bird!

Saturday morning I need to wash my car badly and I wasn't in the mood to eat any of the food I had in the house, so what's a girl to do? Go to her parents house of course. So I packed up the boys and since I had some errands to run as well, it was a good way to start out the day. When I got to their house, I found my mom and dad outback hard at work. Silly people, not enjoying the opportunity to sleep in on a Sat. morning, with no kids at the house. But when the grandkids got their all hard work came to a stop and new activities began. The best part of the morning was when my dad needed to replace the stuff in the humming bird feeder. He let the boys help, which they loved doing, and then they sat back and waited for the birds to come and get their breakfast. Oh the boys loved it sooo much.

The fun continued the next night as we joined my parents for dinner and ate on the deck where the boys could watch for the humming birds. We enjoyed a great meal prepared by my mom and watched various humming birds enjoy the nectar the boys and my dad provided for them the morning before. How fun. It was nice to experience the simple pleasures through my children's eyes. And what a blessing to have such awesome parents who love them so much!